


The Stars All Come Down - A Pulp Mixtape

by Lyras



Category: Pulp (Band)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-21
Updated: 2017-12-21
Packaged: 2019-02-18 02:46:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,966
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13090788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lyras/pseuds/Lyras
Summary: Two kids, a broken-down fountain, and a promise that reverberates through the years





	The Stars All Come Down - A Pulp Mixtape

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cherryvanilla](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cherryvanilla/gifts).



> Hi Cherryvanilla, I really hope you enjoy this! Thanks for letting me wallow in this world for a little while. :)

**The Stars All Come Down – a Pulp mixtape**

 

**Babies**

Two kids are ambling home from school on a drizzly summer’s afternoon, past the broken-down fountain, over the river that runs into a concrete channel beneath the old Trebor factory, and one of them says, _Can you imagine what this’ll be like in the year two thousand? We’ll all be riding hoverboards and speaking through our televisions and living in glass buildings._

_I don’t think so,_ scoffs the other, kicking at a discarded sweet wrapper. _I think it’ll be just the same. Only dirtier._

_We’ll be older, though,_ says the first kid. _Like, twenty-six. D’you think we’ll still be friends then?_

_Course!_ says the second.

But the first, whose dad is just a hazy memory of alcohol and shouting, and whose mam doesn’t seem to have many friends who come around any more, says, _Maybe one of us’ll move away._

The second kid, whose ancestors have lived in Sheffield since the Domesday Book, says, _Not me. I won't._

The first kid turns and sights along a stick, pretending it’s a telescope, maybe one that can see into the future. _Let’s agree to meet up, then. Whatever happens. In the year two thousand._

They make their pact in the shadow of the old fountain and wander home for tea. And the following term they go to comprehensive school, and one of them gets breasts and is in a new class with girls who know all the best make-up tricks, and she still likes _him_ and is a bit sad that they’ve grown apart so quickly, but everything changes, doesn’t it? And she always thinks of him kindly, but she’s so busy with boys and GCSEs and her first job collecting glasses in a pub on Eccleshall Road, and without her realising years have passed since they last spoke. And the other…

The other becomes one of those kids who’d be better off blending into the wallpaper, except he refuses to do that. One of the ones who gets tripped or punched because some other lad thinks that’ll score him points with the girls. The boy who never gets asked out, except as a joke; and when he’s occasionally invited to parties he watches the boys laying siege to Deborah, and he goes home and writes poems about it, and about how they promised they’d always be friends, and now she’s forgotten he exists.

 

**She’s a Lady**

She tries to chat when she sees him around, but these days he pretends not to see her, and she can’t understand why. He went off to university last year – she heard that from his mam – but so did plenty of other people, and they still talk to her when they wobble blearily into the pub for last orders. She wonders if he’s embarrassed to know her, maybe that’s it. Maybe all his friends in London are really cool and edgy; maybe he’s too busy with his art that nobody else understands to find time for a small-town girl back home.

Then Petey grins at her across the bar, all knowing charm and a flash of cash. “Two pints of mild and a slow, comfortable screw up against the wall,” he says, and _he_ goes right out of her mind.

 

**Freaks**

Uni was supposed to be different, but you’re still the odd one out, even if you’ve got a bit more company these days. You’ve slept with a couple of girls, but you hate the course, and you’re thinking of dropping out, maybe heading back up home for a bit, when your mam drops it into the conversation – Deborah’s pregnant.

“One of them lads a couple of years ahead of you – Peter, is it? I went out with his dad a few times, but that was a long time before you came along. Obviously.”

Next day you go into college and create the only piece of artwork your professors rate in your entire university career.

 

**Pink Glove**

Nicolette keeps her so busy, it’s a couple of years before she looks up and realises Pete’s down the pub or ‘working late’ every night. He thumps into bed beside her ages after the light’s gone out, and sometimes she gives herself up to his roving hands, because how long is it since anyone saw her as anything but a frumpy mother? But she’s always careful with the Pill these days. One baby’s all well and good, but another one could look like carelessness. Who said that? It’s the sort of thing _he_ would know.

So things haven’t worked out, and here you are back round the corner from your mam, and if one more thing goes wrong you might just…well, no, you won’t, but never mind. And that bloody fountain’s just down the road, and you can’t seem to walk past it without thinking of her. Your life’s become a hangover without end, so you might as well drink it away, right?

 

**TV Movie**

She’s got stacks to do and stacks to read, especially now Mam’s looking after Nicolette while she goes to college – she’s determined to get qualified now Pete’s out of the picture. But her route takes her past that fountain and she keeps remembering the fun they used to have as kids. So one day she gets his address off his mam, who still chats to her mam over tea and shortbread, because it’s the year two thousand and she’s going to bloody do this.

When you open the door, she looks more beautiful than ever, shivering in her hippie skirt and fake fur jacket while her daughter’s bundled up in mittens and a bobble hat. You make them stand in the hall for ten minutes while you clear the worst of the crap out of the living room and wonder what she'll make of the stains on the sofa.

Obviously you’ve got no milk in, but the cakes she’s brought from Greggs make the black coffee sweeter. She tells you about her nursing course, while Nicolette clambers around the sofa, all big, solemn eyes and wild hair. And just like that, you’re friends again, like the past fifteen years never happened.

 

**Razzmatazz**

She’s sadder and wiser about men – well you could’ve told her that – but that makes it easier, puts you right back up close to her, even if you feel a bit like a gay best friend without the slick hair and muscles.

You’re not stupid enough to believe she changes everything, but things turn around for you then. When your job goes (all the bookshops are closing), you sack off the dole and go in with your mate Dave, who’s opening a café for hippie types with veggie food and all that jazz, because then you can concentrate on your music. Deborah sometimes leaves Nicolette with you – her exams are coming up and her mam does enough as it is. Nicolette's a sweetie, and Deborah, perhaps feeling guilty about saddling her with that name, pretends not to notice when you call her Nicki.

 

**Happy Endings**

She’s so tired. Nicolette’s been a nightmare, especially now Pete’s decided he wants to fulfil his fatherly duties, i.e. take her out every Saturday and spoil her to bits. And work’s just exhausting, and why did she ever think she’d be good at keeping her cool in a frantic, underfunded National Disaster Service? And Mam persuaded her to try one of the new online dating sites, but most of the punters are based in London, and the few that aren’t – well, why did she think they’d be different from anyone else? And one evening when she’s with _him_ , one drink too many, with that bloody fountain sparkling with Christmas lights – it looks lovely now they’ve done it up; who’d have thought it when they were kids? – and Nicolette’s on a sleepover, and there are a hundred reasons why, but anyway, between one sip of wine and the next, she realises his arm’s almost touching hers on the sofa, and she wills it closer, and closer, and closer again, and the second his lips brush hers is the scariest, sweetest moment of her life.

The thing she keeps thinking, aside from the fact that she’s finally going to see what he’s like under those shapeless tops, is that it’s so lovely to be kissed by someone who _knows_ what she’s like and isn’t expecting miracles.

 

**Something Changed**

For a while it’s miraculous. The whole of Sheffield seems to be blooming along with their relationship (okay, that’s New Labour lottery money, but who cares?). Her mam’s over the moon, although yours is oddly subdued about it. Nicki doesn’t seem to notice any difference, which is probably for the best. But none of that would matter without Deborah, the way she crawls into bed after a night shift and wraps herself around you. That look on her face just before she goes down on you. The way you always know where she is in a crowded room, and still she’s the most beautiful woman you’ve ever met.

It can’t possibly last.

 

**Bad Cover Version**

Of course, it doesn’t last. When has anything good ever lasted in her life? After a couple of months he undergoes some sort of personality change: he’s grumpy and he drinks too much (what is it about the men in her life that drives them to drink?). He’s great with Nicki and her mam, but he barely meets her eye. After another two months she’s had enough: tells him to stuff it – and his pretentious poetry and lovelorn songs – because clearly he thinks he’s too good for her.

Another day, another disaster. You’re an idiot, but you knew that. After years of daydreaming (and wanking, and imagining), you finally had her, and you threw her away. Everyone thinks you’re an idiot. Dave definitely thinks you’re an idiot. Nicki knocks on your door one day after school, and all you can do is say sorry. Only your mam sighs and says, well, maybe it wasn’t meant to be. And you? You can’t bring yourself to care. You knew you’d fuck it up, and so you did. Anyway, through the cafe you know all the good dealers, and you've even had a sniff from an agent, and if none of it comes off, well, you'll sort yourself out, won't you? You always have before.

 

**Do You Remember the First Time?**

It’s six months later when the doorbell goes, the new one you installed yourself, that plays a stupid tune. You answer the door humming the song, and she’s there again, with a bottle of wine and a don’t-fuck-with-me frown, and what are you going to do except let her in?

Nothing’s changed and yet everything’s changed: you can’t get back what you’ve lost, and she won’t do that to herself again. So there’s no more snogging up against the wall out the back of the café; no more eager undressing and live bed shows, her trying out her new underwear and you barely even noticing it. Maybe none of that was real at all.

Instead there’s Sunday night films and collecting Nicki from school. You make her coffee in the afternoons, and she phones you after work to make sure you’re ready for your shift. She’s still the most gorgeous woman you’ve ever known. You’re still awkward and lanky and odd. None of your friends know what to do with you both, but that’s okay.

Every time you pass the fountain down the road, you see two kids kicking up rubbish from the old Trebor factory, and you hear those promises in your head.

_Let’s all meet up in the year two thousand, won’t it be strange when we’re all fully grown?  
Be there two o’clock by the fountain down the road._


End file.
